Psychographics speaks more to an attitude, a lifestyle.
The suburb in the 1950s was a bedroom community. The father worked in the city, and the mother stayed home. Now people live and work in the suburbs, and businesses have grown up or moved from cities to certain pockets of what was once the suburbs and created these places that are like cities.
We must permeate the stores with creativity and offer service when and to the degree the customer wants it. Of course, it means offering all the omni bells and whistles they want, like in-store pickup, same-day delivery, and mobile point of sale, and all of this must be done every hour of every day the store is open.
Going forward, we are mindful of the challenges we face in the competitive retail landscape, but we have demonstrated that our concept of building compelling brands that focus on the customers' lifestyles can produce superior results. We will not waver from that concept.
We have a relationship with our customer, and that relationship translates into sales.
Like Free People, the Urban brand is planning to grow by expanding product assortments, expanding the brand reach and by improved marketing.
As a company, we don't contribute to any cause except noncontroversial things like a breast cancer walk. I don't know anybody who is 'for' breast cancer.
I invite you all to visit our new Harold Square or Space 98 stores in New York. I think you'll agree with me that these stores have a distinct Urban Outfitters personality, with fresh, exciting product and an experience that resonates with the 18 to 28 year old urban-dwelling customer.
While stores continue to be a very important part of our business, there is no mistaking the fact that the customers' shopping preference, measured by both traffic and sales, continues to move to a virtual experience.
If we go and see hundreds of different market resources, you are seeing hundreds of different points of view, and once in a while, my experience is, you will come across one or two that are just outstanding, and you never would have thought of them.
The store experience must become a performance, with the energy and precision of a Broadway play.
Quite frankly, the Urban brand organization became too siloed, with too little communication across functional areas. The great creativity that has been the hallmark of our success became stifled.
I would never and did not ever characterize myself as a hippie.
For a suburban man aged 30 to 40, hell is going clothing shopping on a Saturday afternoon. There are about 5,000 other things they would put on the list ahead of clothes shopping.
Our job as a business is not to promote a political agenda. That's not what we do.
The model a lot of companies use is a very pyramidal model which sort of designates that all creativity, all wisdom flows from the top. We think that's the absolute wrong model.
We believe there is no fundamental structural changes in the young-adult market. There are, of course, fashion changes, and the success of each brand depends on the accuracy with which it predicts those changes.
When our customer leaves Urban Outfitters, the Main Line is the type of place where more of them go than don't.
I don't like all suburbs, just like I don't like all parts of cities.
Besides offering desirable products, the Free People brand continue to produce some of the most compelling imagery and customer engagement in the industry.
